Trump Assassination Attempt and the Birth of Conspiracy Theories

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump launched a thousand conspiracy theories about the shooter and who was or was not involved. The former president survived, but many of the conspiracies live on. Listen to John Sipher and Jerry O'Shea - with over 60 years of combined experience in the CIA Clandestine Service - share stories and insights as they teach us to discern between fact and fiction, conspiracy and truth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Is it just me? Or have we all lost our minds?
It's a question I've been asking myself on repeat for
the last eight years, and I know I'm not alone
in that. Is it the politics, is it the culture?
Or am I just getting old? Hi? I'm Jennifer Horn
and I'm a former Republican strategist and party leader turned
independent sanity activist. I decided to do this podcast so

(00:26):
we could explore these questions. I'll bring experts to the
table from politics and media and culture. We'll have raw,
insightful conversations with the clear goal of getting to the
bottom of it all. One way or another. We've all
lost our minds, and I hope you'll join us on
the journey to find them again. Hi, this is Jennifer

(00:48):
Horn and you're listening to Is it just me? Or
have we all lost our minds? And once again, one
of those weeks that feels like we've all lost our minds?
You would think that the craziest thing that would have
happened is that a president of the United States, a
former president of the United States, was targeted by a

(01:08):
gunman this past weekend at a rally. And I don't
want to make light of that at all. A man
lost his life while protecting the life of his daughter,
an extraordinary action that I still don't know how to
wrap my head around. And you know, it's another case
of this, a young person with it's just not making

(01:32):
any sense. We don't really know enough yet to really
talk about it in much detail. And I say this,
You're all going to be surprised to hear me say it,
but I say it sincerely. Luckily Donald Trump is okay.
Before we get into our conversation with our guest today,
I want to be really clear about that this kind
of action is not how you win elections, and it's

(01:52):
certainly not how you preserve democracy, not in the world
that we live in here in the United States of America.
And I have never called for violence. I've always been
very conscious, even when directly insulting the former president. I've
always been very conscious of what I say and how

(02:13):
I say it. And I just think it's a good
reminder for all of us to remember that. At the
same time, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be running
the most aggressive messaging campaign possible against a felon and
an adjudicated rapist and a guy who instigated an insurrection.

(02:33):
So keeping that in mind, I'm very very happy to
have our guests with us today. These particular people, I've
been wanting to get them on for a while, and
it just so happens. It's a coincidence that we've been
able to schedule them, you know, in the wake of
what happened at the rally in Pennsylvania. We have John

(02:54):
Cipher and Jerry O'shay. Between them, they have sixty years
of combined experience the CIA's clandestine Service. Think about that
just for a second. What that means what we just
what we know about the CIA, much less what we
might not know about the CIA. It means we're.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Old Jennifer's.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
And watched up and washed up for it, try not
washed up. Combined sixty years of experience and with They
are now working with Spycraft Entertainment on a podcast called
Mission Implausible Implausible let me say it again, Mission Implausible,
where they use their real life experience to kind of

(03:37):
explain and debunk conspiracy theories, both contemporary and historic. And
in a world where it seems more and more that
politics is fed by misinformation and unfounded conspiracies. I thought
that these guys would be really interesting to talk to

(03:58):
both of you. Thank you very much much for joining
us today. It's good to have you, great to be here.
No pleasure now, John, I need to tell everybody that
I think you were one of the smartest people that
I worked with back in twenty twenty. I had the
great pleasure and honor. You were part of our efforts
at the Lincoln Project during the twenty twenty cycle, where

(04:21):
you were a great fountain of information on things like
misinformation and conspiracy theories, and really for me kind of
cemented for me what I what were kind of my
I guess my common sense instincts to begin with on
how I process information, and that's an important part of this.
So I appreciate that, and it's great to have you

(04:43):
both here. And I know Jerry that we're going to
enjoy you and your insights just as much. So let's
let's do this. Let's start by talking about misinformation and
conspiracy theories, and I want to let's start with what
you just said to me off the air a second ago, Jerry,
talking about the different diference between how as as c

(05:04):
I a clandestine agents, you conspired under certain circumstances and
how that is different from you know, some of these
sometimes very small towns, sometimes global conspiracies that you know,
can can ultimately feed really dangerous activities and actions.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Well, so when you're in the agency, your your life
isn't any different really on a day to day quotitting
basis than anybody else is.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
So I reject that outright right from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I read, right, So yeah, I mean, you know, right right,
I mean, you know, my kids, I got three daughters.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
My kids think I'm you know, like, oh god, it's
dad eye roll right, you know, and my wife like
wants me to take the garbage out so our lives,
you know, aside from the Austin Martins and and and
you know, pyrotechnics and things like that that never happened,
by the way.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
So the let's let's define what a what a conspiracy is,
and what a conspiracy theory is, right, and in English
language I don't think serves us particularly well. So a
conspiracy is like two or more people sort of deciding
to you know, to come up with a story to
convince something else. So people have conspiracy in their lives
all the time. Right, Like if you if you go

(06:21):
to a you know, if you're talking to someone and
the guy you're talking to his tie has a soup
spot on it, you and your spouse may conspire not
to say, hey, Harvey, you look terrible today, or your
hair's not coney like, your tie is off right. You know,
you don't do that. It's a small conspiracy. And those

(06:42):
are the sort of conspiracies that we entered into in
the agency. So for example, when we were on the inside,
we would say, Hi, I'm a second secretary, I'm a diplomat,
when really you're a CIA officer, and you're doing that
for reasons because you know, to do to be a
CI officer and to stay safe and to keep families safe.
You would do that. Now, when you get into really

(07:04):
big conspiracies that involve like world altering ways that involved
thousands of people, and when you think about it, that's
more a conspiracy theory, and there are conspiracies to create
conspiracy theories, and we can sort of talk about all
these as we go on. So yeah, I mean, conspiracies
is something that we all have, we all understand, but

(07:27):
once they start getting out beyond the bounds of what
we normally think of as conspiracies. That's where you get
into conspiracy theorizing and it soart's getting dangerous.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
So John, and wait, wait Jerry, So does your family
know when you were in the agency? The I like
how you say that in the agency? But did they
know what you did for a living? Did your kids
and your wife know what your job was or did
they think you were diplomatical rights?

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Real quick? And everybody has their own stories. The Agency,
for all its rules and regulations, they don't have a
regulation for when you tell your kids right and agency
parlance and agencies speak, that's known as making them witting
witting of your agency affiliation. So we generally wait till
they're in their teen years because you're asking them to
like live live for you, and you're telling them that

(08:15):
you've lied.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
To them for the scary for them too.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
And I had three teenage teenage kids, and we waited
till we came back from the US. We've been like
ten years abroad in Asia and in Europe. Came back
and we took them to family Day, right, which is
a thing, and we drove in the front dates and
they're like, Dad, you can't like drive in here, And
I like, well, and I dropped the penultimate bomb, which

(08:40):
is like I can because I work for CIA. And
then the big the MOA, the mother of all bombs
was dropped. My wife turned around and she's British, although
she's now an American citizen. She turned around and said,
so do I doggings. So that's sort of So she

(09:00):
became one last thing. So I asked her to marry me.
She foolishly said yes. Then I said, oh, by the way,
I'm not who I say I am. You know I
love you, but I have been lying to you. And oh,
by the way, you have to become an American citizen,
and you have to take a lie detector, right, you
have to take a polygraph. And she did it, and
she came in became a citizen, and then which is

(09:22):
not uncommon, and she joined the agency herself.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Wow, that's wild. That is a wild story. John. Same
for you. I assume right you met a British woman
and you how was it for your family? I have
another question to ask you. But you know how, I
haven't really given a lot of thought to the idea
like kids growing up and then teenagers learning you know
what it is you really do and your spouse and

(09:47):
the worry they must carry with that. You know, we
all think how fun it is to be, you know,
a high action spy like Double O seven, but maybe
not so funny, not so fun.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Well, your job is to protect her sources, and so
there's where the responsibility is. And that's where it's not
that you were scared physically for ourselves for the most part,
although sometimes you were, like Jerry was one of these
guys riding horses in Afghanistan, you had to worry about
IEDs and that kind of thing. But for the most part,
what I'm worried about is keeping my sources safe. Yeah,
I met my wife in Moscow, actually was in the

(10:19):
embassy in Moscow. She was American and worked in the
embassy then and I met her there. And then as
far as kids, the same thing. It's when you think
they're mature enough to keep a secret for you and
not you know, put themselves in danger or this need
to tell their friends or something. And so we each
make that decision depending on So you might tell one
kid and then say, don't tell your brother because you

(10:42):
know he's not he's not ready or what have you.
So it's it's different for it's different for all of us,
and our families come with us when we live overseas,
so we usually live. Like Jerry said, we were State
Department officers in US embassies usually for two three four
years at a time, as undercover as diplomats, and so
our families were there living with us for the most part,
except for when we were in especially dangerous places.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Now, to be clear, after we retire, we can roll
our covers back, right, so we're not breaking any laws
or anything. Oh this is we can now say that
we're agency.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
But I assume that there are things you can't say.
I mean, there are stories you just can't tell from
the kind of work that you did.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
We drank a lot, so I've forgotten.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, although I suspect in this podcast you may winkle
some of the secrets out of this.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
It's very good and I don't when I write.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
If I write something, people.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
We want to make sure people are tuning in. And
as long as we said it, let's just remind them again.
The podcast is called Mission Implausible. I highly recommend you
start tuning in. It is not only fascinating, it's fun. So, so John,
talk to me a little bit. What is the difference then,
between conspiracy theories and misinformation. We hear so much about misinformation,

(11:53):
especially in politics these days.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, I see, I see these things were misinformation and disinformation,
and I think conspiracy theories are things that build up
around a few things. Right, So conspiracy theories build up
around the world is really complex and hard to understand.
And if you can find a story that simplifies that
for you, you can you can work with others to

(12:17):
create sort of a theory that fits what you're saying.
She can create a conspiracy theory that the attack and
the president's a good one, right, So, you know, it's
so unsatisfying the real information. How is it possible a
twenty year old little kid got up on the roof
of the gun and was able to shoot at the
president just like JFK. How is it possible some dude
just got a gun and shot at the president. So

(12:39):
you need to create a story, an alternative explanation that
explains that, you know, incompetence is just not enough. There
must be something either it's a it was an inside
job or a stage, or was a false flag. And
then when you do that, there's a community of people
who build around that conspiracy theory, and that gives you
some comfort. You feel like you're in the know and

(13:00):
you unders have some knowledge on something that's bigger, whereas disinformation.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Is exactly and let me let me ask you to
just clarify that really quick. So you're talking about like
a human instinct when you say you need to like
a human like we we end up with this in
this human need to try to make sense of something
that doesn't make sense to us in the moment, and
we sort of create this theory around it. It's not
it's not that we're out there and it's not like

(13:25):
we can say, oh, clearly, this young man got the
gun from somebody in Joe Biden's campaign, And it's like
this thing we do to ourselves in our head. It's
this this need to create sense where none seems to exist.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
I think that's right, and I think and then conspiracy
theories can or misinformation or disinformation can build up around
those things for different reasons. So people may take that
conspiracy theory that that people are comfortable with in their
head and use it for their own purposes, for financial
purposes or political power. So we saw the same thing

(13:59):
with with the president's assassination where a group of people
would say, like you said, oh Joe Biden did it,
or some people on the left would say, obviously this
was stage to make Trump look good to his people, right,
Or and then then there's crazy ones it was Antifa,
or it was the massade, or was a CIA or
what have you. And some people are doing that for
their own purposes to like you know, the political ones

(14:21):
are obvious foreign actors like the Russians. They're spinning things
up to try to create chaos and weaken Americans. And
so there's different Misinformation could be just spreading information that's wrong,
and we see a lot of that on on social media.
Disinformation is somebody purposely doing it for a purpose, but
just conspiracy theories or something. They're just something we instinctually

(14:45):
move too oftentimes and gives us comfort that we have
some inside knowledge.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Right, saying I don't know is it's like unsatisfactory, right,
Like I don't have the facts, I don't know. It's
it's much more empowering to like come up with something right.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
And I wonder how much of it is people who
have a need to always be in on it. But
like you know, I've I've found in politics or people
like it's almost it's it's not hard usually like on
a campaign, to figure out who's leaking to the press,
because it's somebody who needs to always be the one

(15:23):
the you know. And it's and that's different than feeling
insecure or chaotic or disconnected because what you're looking at
and hearing doesn't make sense to you, maybe emotionally or
you know, in a sensible way.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
Yeah, so let me let me throw a name at you,
Leon sol Goos, Right, like, only a few people will
go either. Who that is?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
So I have no idea who that is?

Speaker 3 (15:50):
Lean Solos. He he's the guy he assassinated President McKinley
in nineteen oh one in Buffalo, New York. Right, so,
Lean Solgos, despite his weird last name Polish. He was
born in Michigan, and he was by all accounts, he
was an outsider, and he took an interest at what
was that time a big movement anarchism, which today we

(16:12):
would call libertarian right. If you look at what the
anarchists believed in sort of like lesser almost no government,
letting people do what they like almost with complete freedom.
So soul those decides he's an anarchist, although he really isn't.
I mean, he's just sort of decided that sort of cool.
And he meets with a couple of anarchists, gets some pamphlets,
goes to Buffalo, and he shoots McKinley and McKinley dies.

(16:37):
So all the evidence is that there was no conspiracy.
He just basically took his father's gone. He lived at
home with his parents, right it sounds like today, and
he shot and he shot him. And later, however, conspiracy
theories rose up because that was unsatisfactory that Leon could

(16:57):
kill the president and he did so.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
I wanted to believe that a young guy living at
home and who just took his dad's gun could actually
kill the leader of the free world.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
That can't happen. Well, yes it could. Actually, it's like
Okham's razor. It's actually the most obvious thing. So he does.
And the conspiracy theories that came out of this was
and politically motivated, was this is an anarchist plot. Like
hundreds of people were arrested, dozens of people were thrown

(17:30):
out of the country. Congress later passed a set of
laws in nineteen oh three as a direct result of
these conspiracy theories around poor Leon, who was then executed.
He went to trial and after half an hour they
found him guilty because he said he was. And Congress

(17:50):
passed a set of laws based on the conspiracy theories
that came around this, and one of them was that
they restricted immigration, which is what they wanted anyway. They
just basically used it, and they said the anarchist, the anarchists,
as if like there's this like anarchists don't believe in
in like uniting on anything. So but this anarchist they
all got they got together, and so they banned anarchists.

(18:13):
They tried to shut down immigration from southern Europe, you know, Greek,
c Italians, Sicilians. They didn't want them to in the country.
And weirdly, they also banned people with epilepsy from coming
to the United States because that was part of it
as well. So Leon shoots the president, and the conspiracy
theories revolve around this that people I think with malis

(18:34):
a forethought made for their own political reasons, right, And
it ends up with the US Congress saying people with
epilepsy can't come to the United States. Well that comes
to you know, Cristors don't take and I think that's
a there's a reflection of that possibly today too. I'm
just theorizing.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
I don't know, well, and you said a number of
things in there that I think are interesting. I'll start
with I think that modern libertarians would really be offended
at being grouped in with anarchists. My son. My son
tells me that libertarians believe in less government, minimal government,
almost no government, but not anarchy, but not anarchy right right, The.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Anarchy has been changed and that those days it meant
they didn't have the word libertarian. It had no government
and no religion.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
And you just said with malice and forethought. So that's
an interesting component to conspiracy theories and how they be
you know, misinformation, disinformation and some of the things that
John was just talking about. So, John, when we talk
about malice and forethought, that's an important part of it
in politics because it matters. We need to be able

(19:44):
to discern between how much you know, when something that
is really divisive or really dangerous is now spinning out
of control, is it happening intentionally because somebody in a
campaign or in a in an office, or one side
or the other, because somebody is creating danger and division

(20:04):
for their own you know, personal or political inveantment, or
is this something that has is just kind of organically,
which is kind of more like how you described it
a couple of minutes ago, you know, growing and becoming
this big thing, and then it becomes dangerous because of that.
How do we tell the difference?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Well, I think there's that instinct to organically try to
create simplifications for ourselves, but there are people who know
how to use that to weaponize that right. So literally
on social media, within the first twenty hours after the assassination,
there was hundreds of millions of tweets and push on
false information on just on Twitter alone. And then there's

(20:44):
some people who quickly that people look up to. Elon Musk.
For example, Mike Collins, Republican Congressmen from Georgia, right away
said Joe Biden sent the orders for this. Elon Musk
said the shooter must have been deliberate. A number of
people said, oh, they try to jail them now they've
tried to kill him.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Ronnie Jackson, the former doctor, immediately said this is all
Trump raged left wing lunatics did this. They have blood
on their hands, and so those people have political interests,
and they immediately took this and spun it like they
started within minutes saying it was a left wing lunatic
before they anyone had any idea who this person was
or anything about them. So those people had malice the forethought,

(21:26):
and I think they understood that people would gravitate onto
that and then create conspiracies around that that would benefit
their side. And I think others are doing it on
the other side, but probably with less effect.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Well, I want it's important here to have introduced another
We're talking about misinformation, disinformation oftentimes on the inside inside
the agency, we talk about malign influence. So say it
again to us malign influence foreign governments, say Russia or
ram on. They will take this for an example. And

(22:03):
I don't know how or if they're going to like
because I'm not in the inside anymore, but they will
take this, these conspiracy theories that are being thrown out
that John mentioned, and they will try to create chaos.
They will sit down and they take real facts, right,
they will maybe curate them, twist them around a little bit.
They'll embroider in the outside throw on a conspiracy theory,

(22:23):
and then they will try to pit left against right
with competing conspiracy theories. So there will be some truth
in it, there will be some miss things that are
sort of half truths, There will be things that people
want to want to believe. They will appeal to people's prejudices.
And the point is the malign influence campaign, which will

(22:43):
contrue contain truth, half truth, conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and they
will try to pet left and right together because their
job is to make us weaker. And I think that
happens more often than you think.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yes, they benefit from our division. There's you know that
we have enemy exist who benefit when we're in the
street arguing like idiots with each other over things that
have no you know, you know, no seed of rationality
to it, but you did just sort of you know.
I think one of the things that's really hard to

(23:18):
to to confront with these sorts of things is that
how often and you both alluded to this, and we
know it to be true, how often a theory, a
conspiracy theory, or a misinformation campaign that has become dangerous,
how often it is seeded in just a little tiny

(23:38):
piece of truth, you know, and and like and the
thing that I remember that that the kind of crazy.
Example that I think of with this is that you know,
the guy who who had the gun in d C
and crashed into the back room at the pizza joint
because he was convinced that Hillary Clinton and her husband

(24:01):
were running a child's sex slave operation out of this
little pizza joint somewhere in downtown DC. And you know,
you come years later and I can remember I was
chairman for four years in New Hampshire, and even before that,
when I was running for office, I can remember people
sort of talking about that, alluding to it, and in
my head thinking, you people are crazy. This is I

(24:24):
didn't know there was so much crazy in politics because
I got into politics slate. And then, of course, years later,
the Epstein thing comes out and you start hearing about
who was or wasn't on Epstein's plane, and you know
what can be confirmed and what can't be confirmed, and
now those people all feel like justified. I told you

(24:45):
that Bill Clinton, you know it was involved in you
know this, How do you how does someone like myself
even pick that apart and try to create a rational
response to you know, the pizza joint and Hillary Clinton
and Bill Clinton. We're not right, you know, we're not

(25:06):
dealing in children's sex slaves. But it turns out at
least Bill Clinton was on Epstein's plane, Like what do
we do?

Speaker 3 (25:13):
So is Donald So is Donald Trump?

Speaker 1 (25:15):
By the way, and so is Donald Trump? You're right,
which is a contemporary truth that we can that it's
okay to embrace. So is Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 (25:23):
So?

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Like, what do we do with that? What is that?

Speaker 2 (25:27):
That's the really hard part of this, And we just
said we had a couple of episodes where we brought
in professors, experts, former conspiracists to talk about how do
you how do you get out of this? And frankly,
there is no really good answer. It's almost individually, slowly,
over time, people who care and love about the person
bringing them in out of this. We've seen it now
with QAnon and a number of these other things that

(25:50):
have a political basis. They take some small piece of
reinformation and build this conspiracy around it. Now there's conspiracy
theories that aren't really there's a conspiracy theory that the
Illuminati has places to live under the Denver airport, right
and trails are keeping us fertile or infertile or whatever
they are from airplanes and Bill Gates is putting chips

(26:13):
into our vaccines and stuff like. Some of them are weird,
but then there's other ones that are that they are
really quite dangerous, like QAnon for example, or like you said,
commet pizza with this guy came in with a gun
and believed in the basement they were doing child sex things.
It wasn't even a basement. He was running around trying
to open doors and they didn't have a basement.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
I've been to that pizza place.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
It's really really scary and dangerous, and it's difficulty once
they're built and once certain people promote them to get
out of it. And that's a dangerous thing when it
becomes part of the political landscape, right, because it's one
thing if it's a somewhere in the culture and people
are believing those but if certain political actors benefit by

(26:56):
them and promote them, it's a really really dangerous thing
because because we've seen now that some people are willing
to step to the next level and commit violence based
on these beliefs, and so there's gonna be people, there's
gonna be probably more violence coming around the false information
around the attack and President Trump, right, you know, Jerry

(27:16):
and I have seen it. We're we're on that list
of people who are supposed to be arrested and rounded
up with the new Trump You're probably on it too.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, there's a good chance administration.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
And what have you.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
And like that's all seems sort of funny if you're
from the outside, But there's people who really really get
worked up and believe that, yeah, pedophiles or bloodsuckers or
whatever it is. And there's some people who will take
action on that. So it's a really really difficult and
dangerous thing and difficult to fix well.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
And you talk about how dangerous it is, the uh,
the danger when it becomes so entrenched in our politics,
and I would suggest over the last ten years it
has become entrenched, and maybe longer than that, and I've
just been naive. But it starts to when it influences
how people vote. When it when it dishonestly incorrectly influences

(28:10):
how people vote and how they perceive human beings, especially candidates.
It has a direct impact on democracy. It has an
impact on the kind of country we are as a
democratic republic and how you know, what the how how
we how are our our promise unfolds in the future

(28:31):
and so that's the scary part. But either one of you,
whoever has the answer on this or wants to, or
maybe both of you. What is it about one person,
you know, is so susceptible to immediately embracing any sort
of conspiracy, no matter how completely extreme and insane it sounds.

(28:52):
And then and then the next person, you know, is
just instinctively much more questioning and rational. And there are
some people out there who just seem to have been
born to be conspiracy theorist. You know, what is it
a brain thing? Is it a chemical thing? Is it
a nature versus nurture? What is it?

Speaker 3 (29:11):
There is? There are neurological reasons for this and evolutionary
reasons for it. So if so, evolutionarily speaking, people have
been around maybe two hundred years, depending where you want
to two hundred thousand years, depending on to draw the line.
So if you're you know, for one hundred and ninety
six thousand of these years, we're hunter gathers and you're
going through the veld or the jungle and you hear

(29:33):
a rustle in the bushes, now it can be either
a predator or it can be nothing. Well, neurologically and
evolutionarily speaking, it's an advantage to go, oh my god,
a migdalar response. You know, it could be a tiger,
and that's the best thing I need to run. Well,

(29:54):
if your response is well, I'm going to go check
it out and go determine what the fans are. If
it is a tiger, you don't actually get to like
pass your genes down right, right, right, right, So there
isn't there is an evolutionary advantage to making, you know,
to accepting things on faith or to make decisions based
not on a factual basis. Right, So there's an evolutionary

(30:17):
advantage to that. But for the last four thousand years
that's not sort of been the case, and we we
need to you know, faith is not a reliable path
to truth, right, and I think you know today's politics,
we need to you know, the burden of use logic,
the burden of proof. When you make an assertion like

(30:41):
the election was stolen, it's up to you to prove it.
So you've got two choices. One is to try to
make a fact basing and the other is to peal
to the Amigdala response a neurological approach and get people
to accept it on faith. The problem with that and
is inside of democracy, once you no longer accept democratic outcomes,

(31:09):
the only other alternative for a strong man is violence
or intimidation. Right, And I'll take one more step further
countries like Russia. Butin's Russia today, the nihilism. You know,
what they've got out there is there is no such
thing as truth. Truth doesn't exist, and they're trying to
push this on us as well. It doesn't matter what

(31:30):
you say, everything is conspiracy. Don't trust anything. And if
you don't trust anything, then the state gets to decide, right,
And it's based on faith. And certainly in Russia, nobody
believes the government. Nobody believes anything. And if there's nobody believes,
if you don't believe in facts, there's a vacuum there
and a strong man can fill it. So I'll step
back from that.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
That's a great example of it, talking about the election,
that the election was stolen because another quality, another personality,
you know, another part of the personality of the people
who really because because one I have some sympathy for
those people. For some of those people who are are

(32:12):
they're not evil, they're just deeply radically convinced of the
rightness of something that is wrong or something that is dangerous.
And I think that the that the so called stolen
election is a great example of that. And you just said,
you know, if you're telling me that the election is stolen,

(32:32):
then prove it. And we saw how many sixty seventy
eighty court cases that went one after the other after
the other after the other, all hundred percent of which
were rejected, so which in not being able to prove
these elections was stolen. And all the information that came
out really proved that it was not stolen. There are

(32:53):
still millions of Americans who are absolutely convinced that it was.
They are going to reject They're not going to believe
what their eyes see, you know. And I think that's
kind of what feeds the danger. And I guess, and John,
you tell me how common this is maybe, or talk
about this influence once a person goes all in for

(33:17):
on a position, and this is true of people who
are I'm all in as a Republican or I'm all
in as a Democrat, I'm all in as of this
or that. But once somebody is all in on a conspiracy,
it's very difficult for them to convince themselves to backtrack
from that. You know, they've been public, they've argued with
their families, they've posted on social media. They you know,

(33:38):
they they're they're convinced that we're the ignorant ones who
just don't understand what they're telling us. And I think
that person is almost as dangerous as the person who
ultimately takes his dad's gun and climbs on the top
of a building and pulls the trigger.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
When Jerry talked about sort of our prehistory and things
that are just built into our system. Another one it's
similar to that is tribal nature. Yeah, and tried the
tribal nature. As you want, you want to associate with
people around you. They're killar to you and you listen
to them. And so, you know, we a lot of
people fallow politics, have been in Washington, have worked in

(34:16):
public service or those type of things, foreign policy like
we have. You know, it's very much a fact based
work world. You try to understand all their cultures, you
try to dig in. But for most people, you know
the world is just getting more and more and more complex,
and truly people just don't have the time or the
ability or to just they're they're they're swamped with information

(34:40):
and they don't have a means to process it. And
these bad actors, these malign actors, are dumping more information
on them. Like Jerry said, some of them are just
trying to put so much information in your face. It's
all saying different things so that you just say, I'm
just gonna believe whatever my tribe says or my people say.
And at the end of the day, emotions and feelings

(35:01):
are more powerful than facts, and so exactly a lot
of people the twenty twenty election, You'll start to say,
you know, it wasn't Sotle, it wasn't Stole, and they'll
just be like, well, I feel that it was.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
I believe it with feeling.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
But when it's not about feelings, but it's them saying
there's too much information. I can't figure it out. People
I trust and like say it and I have no
other means of you know, I've heard this and I
heard that, and they don't make any sense. So I'm
just going to believe what I want to believe in
my tribe believes. And so a lot of this is
just again it's human nature, and there are bad actors

(35:34):
who are taking advantage of that human nature.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Well, and I've always said, and I can remember talking
to activists and county chairmen and things about this when
I was in New Hampshire all the time, that politics
and voting are ninety nine percent of the time are
emotional actions, emotional choices. They are not numeric or formulaic.

(35:58):
You know, it's which Candida or which party makes me
feel seen, heard, understood, cared for, nurtured. Like it's that
kind of a reaction. And one of the things I
really worry about, and this is slightly off off topic,
perhaps I won't go any further than this, one of
the things I really really worry about is that whether

(36:20):
it's Joe Biden or the Democratic Party or people like
myself are now independent, and you know that we have
not been able to make that emotional connection with voters,
to in relationship to why it's important to preserve democracy,
why it's important to abandon your tribe for a minute,

(36:41):
and like, what is the emotional connection for democracy? It
seems like a dry history, you know, lesson, rather than
something you can really get people jazzed up about taking
an action on.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Let me just send quick then I agree with you,
and I think when we talk about the politics what
we're seeing in the politics today, the emotional piece. I
think we three, based on what I know about our politics,
think probably that the Biden administration has a lot of professionals.
They seem to be doing a good job and focus
on the economy and foreign policy, and they take the
things seriously. And but one thing that I do think

(37:17):
is we look at Joe Biden and is he should
he stay or should he go? Is he can be
He can be a very good administrator, a very good politician,
but he's a bad communicator. He does not have that
ability to tap into people's emotions and make it really
clear of why what he's doing is important to your life.
He's trying, but he just seems to have lost that
skill that he may have had when he was younger.

(37:38):
And communication is probably the biggest thing that that we
need from presidents to tap into that emotional that emotional piece.
We can argue to the till the till the cows
come home that you know, the economy is doing well,
and the border is better, and we're doing well overseas,
and but but if you don't feel it, you don't
feel it. I mean, people in Pennsylvania, you see this
stuff in certain places. They're they have jobs, are doing

(38:01):
better than they've ever done before. But they're like, oh,
everything's worse, and it's it's communication.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well, and my daughter in law knows how much she
spends by heart on every single item in the grocery store.
Not my daughter in law, my daughter. Oh my god,
hopefully she doesn't listen to this episode. My daughter can
come back and tell me how much she's spent on
a loaf of bread and a gallon of two percent milk,
and you know, go right down the list. And so

(38:28):
she's like, I am paying more for my groceries than
ever before. And that's all. That's it for her. That's
full stop, that's it. Nothing else matters, the fact that
she and her husband are both making more money than
they used to make, that they've gotten promotions or raises
or liking the whole year, communities like whatever it is.
And I think some people live in and I understand

(38:48):
completely why they do, in this very narrow space where
they're taking care of their fit kids and they're going
to work and they're balancing their own checkbook. Although I
just age myself, nobody this is a checkbook anymore. You
know they live in these very narrow in this very
narrow space, and it's human nature that they're doing it,
but I think it contributes to a lot of what

(39:10):
we're talking about here. So here's what I would like
to do is I had two issues. One that is contemporary,
one that is historic, and I would just ask you
to tell me whatever you can or can't or do
or don't know about it. And one is I was
shocked at how quickly conspiracy theories and how ugly some

(39:31):
of the conspiracy theories that grew out of the Hamas
attack on Israel grew up on social media like instantly.
And I shouldn't have been shocked, because of course, the
division and the hatred between those two entities has existed
since the dawn of those two entities, right since the
dawn of time. But how do we someone like myself,

(39:53):
who I think is bright enough at least and I
know to read legitimate sources and I know not to
listen to you people on Twitter who have three followers
and that sort of thing. How did we pick apart
that kind of an international thing that brought so much
division and violence, frankly to our country in protests and

(40:16):
on campuses, And I guess I'm not even necessarily a
specific question, sort of just pick apart that circumstance for
me and whatever you can contribute to it. And I'd
love to hear from both of you on it.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
So I guess I'll jump in. I think one of
the issues is competing simple narratives and a lack of communication. Right,
so people are putting out People inform themselves regardless of
what we'd like to think through stories, through narrative. Storytelling
is important. And in the in Israel and between Israel

(40:51):
and Gaza, there are two competing narratives and both are simplistic,
and both are kind and true and kind of not true,
and people don't talk to each other. And you know,
and for me is the Palestinians. They have some legitimate
gripes and they have a genuine narrative they put across Now. Hamas,

(41:12):
on the other hand, and this is something I've dealt
a lot with. My primer does not have right Hamad.
If Hamas believes in honor killings, it believes in marrying
girls off at thirteen, Hamas murders anybody who's gay. Hamas
does not believe in democracy. Well, that's not the narrative
they want to tell. They want to tell a larger

(41:35):
Palestinian dispossession thing, which which has it. The Israelis, on
the other hand, you know my personal thing, you know, Netanya,
who has got a lot to answer for, right with
illegally dispossessing people in the West Bank and promoting Hamas
thinking he can play them off. But at the same time,

(41:57):
if Hamas's point is, if their main negotiating position, which
it is, is the land is ours and the Israelis
either need to die, leave or convert, that's not going
to get you anywhere, right, And so the Israelis I understand,
I understand where the Israelis are coming from as well,

(42:19):
But the answer lies someplace in the middle, and it
lies in communication. And we're not having that because we're
dealing with two completely simple, too at odds, competing simplified narratives,
overly simple the accurate thoughts.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, I mean, the US government and the Europeans and
Arab governments have been trying to deal with the Israeli
Palestine issue for the last forty to fifty years, and
it's it's so complicated, and so what's happened now is
the war has done exactly what Jerry said, it's it's
it's you want to simplify and pick aside. And frankly,
it's really really hard because you have you have you know,

(43:01):
Hesbal in the north where Shia Iran soorts. You got
Hamas in the south who are Sunni, but their support
also by Israel who's Shia. And then you got the
Israelis missed a lot ron, I'm sorry, then you And
then you got the Israeli's mistreating Palestinians in the West
Bank where the Palestinian authority is. And then you had
Netanya who trying to play games where he was actually

(43:23):
to weaken the Palistinian authority, he was trying to strengthen Humas.
But then I'm also the one that attacked it. So
like it gets really complicated really quickly, and I think,
you know, it's a it's maybe a form of conspiracy theories.
It's like, give me a simple narrative, I'm going to
run with it. And so my only point really is
that it's a really complex situation. They require some real

(43:44):
study and to come up with simplistic views of someone
being evil or not evil. I would ask people to think,
think about yourselves and the people you know are people
usually evil or not evil? No, they live in the
real world and they have to deal with the things
around them, And so yes, I think you know Hamas
has done horrible things, and the Palestinians have done dumb things,

(44:06):
and the Israelis have done horrible things and dumb things.
But they're democracy. So it's worth It's good if people
get interested in the area and study it and try
to figure it out and travel there. But to come
up with these simplistic things that one size right and
one side is wrong is not really helpful.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, not in this
particular Lisson.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
It's the oversimplification. You talked about that a little bit
earlier too, Jerry, is it? And maybe it's the human
instinct to oversimplify or to need want to oversimplify so
we can understand things. So then here's my My next
one is why did Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Rswold Terry?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
You could have that one, I have no friggin So
I will answer by answered by avoiding your question and
and delving back into history for a bit. So there's
this saying that people all know your name is Mud, right,
your name will be Mud. Well, that goes back to
the Lincoln assassination and John Wilkes Booth famously, you know,

(45:05):
he shot Lincoln, jumped onto the stage, hurt his leg
and he ran off, limped off. Well, his leg was
hurt and he ended up at a doctor in Maryland
called Samuel Mud, and Samuel Mud fixed his leg. Well,
investigations later found that Samuel Mud was in on it

(45:26):
or he certainly he didn't report that. He did not
report after the after the assassination, he didn't report that
that John Wolkespooth he fixed his leg. It turns out
that he had been a Southern sympathizer for years, that
he lost five of his slaves and a lot of
his income when when Lincoln freed the slave, I mean
it's paid the slaves, and that he had been meeting

(45:47):
with He had been meeting with John Wilkes Booth and
some of the other conspirators beforehand. So so Mud claimed
he was innocent, and to this day people are still
ourguing about it. Well, John and I happened to know
a descendant, This is Phil of the Mud family of
Samuel Mudd, and he's like yeah, he was in on it.

(46:09):
There was a conspiracy. So sometimes there is a conspiracy,
but you need the facts to come out, and like
we said, the burden of proof is to show that
it's the case. So I'm going for Jack Ruby. The
answer is the answer is there's either yes, no, or
the the answer that most people should have, which is

(46:30):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Right, So you can't tell me either one of you.
If Lee Harvey Oswald was an inside job from the
CIA trying to take out Kennedy, I.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Can tell you that that's a different question.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
Yeah, that's a different question.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
So then then let me ask that question directly. Was
Lee Harvey Oswald an inside job from the CIA trying
to kill Jack Kennedy?

Speaker 2 (46:50):
No, No, I'll tell you. Let me add some more
around that. So it's funny. So we have this podcast, right,
we're trying to look at conspiracy theories, but one we've
ad so far is the jfk assassination. And you'd think
because we worked for you know, thirty some years inside
the CIA would be one we would jump on it.
But the problem is people have been digging into that

(47:10):
and arguing over it for like sixty years now, long
or longer, and the people who are have believed one
side or another are so dug in and have read
so much stuff that you know, if we try to
do a podcast for forty five minutes to talk about it,
like you just get overwhelmed. Because people who in the
in conspiracy theories are in whatever views they have, are

(47:33):
so strongly dug in, and they have so many but
they believe our facts behind it. It is really hard
to pull that apart now. But one thing I can
say is conspiracies are real. Conspiracies are really hard to
keep secret, and we know that from the CIA. We
keep secrets, and we understand that the more people in

(47:54):
on a secret, the more chance that secret doesn't last
very long. And what they Hey, you tell you for
sure is that I work in the CIA for thirty years.
And I'll tell you right now, if I had gotten
the slightest piece of information that I thought the CIA
or somebody else was involved in killing JFK, I would
spit it out right now and tell everybody. I would
become famous, I'd be take money, I would be able.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
To get your pultzer.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
I assume the answer it's sort of like what we
see with President Trump right, a dumb kid gets on
It doesn't make any sense. How could he get on
that roof when all those police were there and he
shot at Trump and it's not clear he was even
some politically motivated. It doesn't make sense. People can't be
that incompetent. Therefore we have to come up with the reason.

(48:37):
And that's sort of what happened. I think with JFK
is there's just been decade after decade of story and
built around it. And then the Russians. There's a whole
Russian piece to this, Supin piece to this, there's whole
political pieces to this. There was political pieces to try
to push through the investigation quickly to then create their
own separate conspiracy theories. But the one thing I can

(48:59):
tell you is if in fact it was a conspiracy
by people like in the CIA to kill the president
of the United States, was an amazing The fact that
no one's talked about it for seventy years suggests to
me that it's not right.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
And people in the CIA, a lot of them voted
for Kennedy, So why would they, you know, why would they?
Why would they keep it quiet all these years? It
makes no sense whatsoever. Our lives and the lives of
the CIA as a bureaucracy are the same as anybody
else's company or organization. People talk and and I will say,
some of the most secret things inside of the CIA.

(49:33):
If you actually work there and we have a Starbucks downstairs,
if you hang out in the Starbucks and you hear
people talking elliptically about things, or eventually you're going to
be like, oh, I know what that's about, and like
there are a number of number of really you know
things that I was not read into, but just hanging
with people and having lunch and a wink and it's like, oh,

(49:54):
I know what they're doing, right and and like and
generally I know what it is later because I did
in the Washington Post. That's our lives are no different
than anybody else's.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
I wanted the Dunkin Donuts, not the Starbucks.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Just that, Jerry, you keep saying that over and over again,
how normal all the CIA agents are were just like
everyone else. Methinks you doth protest too much. I think
you're trying to. I think there's a story back there
that you're trying to hide. So then let's take it
back to the beginning and finish off then talking about
the kid, and we call him a kid. He was

(50:29):
an adult who climbed the roof and shot into the
president's rally, the former president's rally, let me be clear,
and killed a man. And apparently I can't imagine a
bullet just nicking his ear to the point where there
was no I mean, oh my god, you know. And

(50:50):
and for those who think that it was like the
Trump campaign trying to elicit sympathy, all Trump had to
do was like shift his weight and he would have died.
You know, when you realize where the bullet was, that
makes no sense. But you said, either you or John
just said something about, uh, you know, could they could they?
Could they really be that incompetent?

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (51:10):
I My guess is that the Secret Service dropped the
ball here that this this building should have been within
the perimeter that you know, I don't know. Everybody's showing
the tape where rally goers could see the kid climbing
onto the onto the building, Like why couldn't the Secret Service? Well,
I don't know where the Secret Service was set up
or where they were or anything like that. But at

(51:34):
what point should we expect to know more? Should we
expect to know everything that there is to know. Like
I'm thinking, I'm remembering when Reagan got shot. We were
getting updates in front of the hospital, you know, every
half hour one way or another. That Now, obviously Trump
wasn't injured the way that that Reagan was, but it
does seem like they took him out of there and

(51:57):
that was it, like it was all over. We never
from a hospital person. All we heard was the campaigns
that he's fine. Like how much of all this feeds it?
And how much of it should we look at and
realistically go, huh, I wonder what really happened.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
I'll go first, hit both. I mean, every time there's
a lack of clear communication, false information, or we create
information around that and so, yeah, did the bullet hit
him or did it hit the plastic thing and the
plastic hit it, Like we don't want to tell you
don't know that, We don't know how bad he was hurt.
The Secret Service clearly screwed up here. Now it may

(52:37):
have been the local police, but they're in charge of
telling the local police what to do. Local police are
supposed to have a means of communicate. They're supposed to
having means to check these places. So it was a
complete screw up. There's got to be investigations, serious investigations
on what happened there until that information comes out. Every
day that that doesn't come out, people create the stories
that fit whatever narrative they want to do. So that's

(53:00):
a problem here, is is the lack of inform There's
going to be conspiracies. Even a perfect information comes out. Yeah,
but the longer it takes, the more sort of confusing
it is, the more there's space for this kind of stuff,
and there's the more space for bad actors to use
that to their advantage.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
Right, And you know there'll be a lot on the
kid's motivation, and you know, the answer sometimes is we
don't know, or it's what's more simple, let's go back.
Let's go back to the year three hundred and fifty
six BC. There was a guy by the name of
Harristratus and he was just a nebish, right nobody, and
he wanted to be famous. So he burnt an arsenotic.

(53:42):
He burnt down the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one
of the seven Wonders of the world. He burned it down,
and he came out and said, I did it, and
the reason he did it is he wanted to be famous.
He wanted notoriety. And in the Greek world time that
a dictate was put out that no one will ever

(54:04):
mention his name. It was like illegal to mention his
name because I didn't want to give him what he wanted, right,
which was notoriety or making an impact. But the very
fact that they put out the law saying you can't
mention his name meant that everybody knows what it is.
That to this day, if you if you you know,
google Haristratus, you'll you'll you'll see that he actually got

(54:27):
away with it. So you know, these the motivation can
be as simple as I want to, I'll be famous,
right the guy who shot John Lennon as all these people. Unfortunately,
there is something that there's an advantage that goes to that.
And and then I'll say one last thing is a
pet peeve of mine sort of Pennsylvania is an open

(54:49):
carry law, right, so he could take legally, he could
take his weapon right to the perimeter, as could anybody else.
And it's unclear to me legally inside of Pennsylvania where
does he actually cross the line. So if he pulls
out a weapon. Is that illegal? And the answer is no.

(55:12):
It seems to me right if he wull I mean,
he has to show it, but he pulls it out
of a holster as he starts aiming towards someone. Is
that illegal? Arguably no, putting his finger on the but arguably.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Ahead, go ahead. I'm just saying, yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
When there's a when people, when a place is a
wash in firearms and fighter arms are part of your
daily situation, it's much more difficult for the police and
or for the authorities and a place like Pennsylvania than
it is in a place like Sweden or the UK
or other places where firearms simply aren't.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
That Maybe the police thought that was a secret Service
guy or the Secret.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Service a priest guy.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Yeah, Like the communications like that's gonna that's what we're
gonna have to figure out, Like he had him under
the gun site, but they said, oh, maybe that's the police.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Well that was what you said a second ago about John,
about communication between the two entities, and Jerry, you and
I will have to get back to the conversation about
about guns and all of that on another day. That's
sure that we should be talking about that as part
of this campaign a lot more than we are. But
to your point, I my son, my oldest son, James,

(56:25):
and I were just talking about this a day or
two ago. You said, is it illegal if he takes
it out? Is it illegal if he points it as
someone but doesn't put a tricker? From the Secret Service
point of view? And maybe you don't know the answer
to this with certainty. If they see a guy on
the roof pointing the gun, if they see it, right,
do they get to take him out or do they

(56:45):
have to wait till he does something to take him out?

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Yeah? Exactly. Yeah, you know it might have caused a
slight hesitation the eighty six seconds, like do they know
it's like it's actually okay for people to carry a
gone around openly there? So now they've got to determine
what his motive is and how do they do And
I'm talking more generally now, Noddy, right.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Who knows none of us know, none of the three
of us know what's happening in the investigation with what
happened in Pennsylvania with Trump, and we should be clear
about that. But you just said something Tory that I
hadn't even really considered. And it's pretty simple did the
Secret Service seem and think could he be part of
the police effort? And did the police see him and
think could he be part of the secret service effort?

(57:28):
And that goes back to what you said, John, It's
all about communication. I don't want to keep any more
of your time. You guys are fascinating and we are
going to do this again, and so be on the
lookout for another invitation for me in the months of
months ahead. This is so important. I want to thank

(57:49):
first everybody who is tuned in and are listening today.
This is Jennifer Horne you're listening to. Is it just
me or have we all lost our minds? And the
conversation we had today about misinformation, information and conspiracy theories,
it's so important for us all to really understand this
if we are going to be educated, rational, clear thinking voters,

(58:12):
but also just members of our community. I guess as well.
We didn't get into the conspiracy theories about the local
school board member who's having an affair with the local
town council guy and stuff like that. But this is
really important stuff. So I'm grateful that you have tuned in.
I appreciate it. I'm glad that I invite you to
join us again next week. And I want to give

(58:33):
a special thank you to John Cipher and to Jerry O'sheay.
You have been fabulous. Please tune into their podcast Mission Implausible,
where they use their combined sixty years of experience and
see the CIA's clandestine service to unravel conspiracy theories, Oh

(58:54):
the new gentlemen. Thank you both so much for joining
me today.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
John Glitter, thanks Yes,